wasm-as-html VS botnet

This vacation, I've got around to this clever stupid solution to embed an HTML/Browser polyfill into the WASM module without changing any of its actual native functionality. Make your programs run it on user's machines that don't even know what PyPI/WASI/wasmtime is! Just give them an '''html''' page.

I was/am working on a project (https://github.com/JMS55/botnet), where users upload scripts compiled to WASM to control entities on a game server, so that they can write custom behavior.

Never heard of extism before, but second using WASM for plugins/scripting/extensions. I'm using it for botnet(1). Each player uploads a WASM program to control their bots. Both the server and the bot SDK are written in Rust, and can share some code.

4. Speed

I'm hoping to write my thesis for my master's degree on this topic this year. I'm also in the process of writing a game like screeps, where users provide a WASM script to control units for an RTS-style game (without combat though) https://github.com/JMS55/botnet.

It's amazing how simple it is to constrain memory usage, runtime duration, and secure exported functions to a WASM VM. Performance is also great - currently about ~6 microseconds per tick per unit, up to ~200 microseconds when doing expensive pathfinding. All that, while letting you program your units in Rust - the same language as the server is written in, while being able to share code with the server, and not having to use something more script-y like lua.

The boilerplate sucks, but it works well when you don't need a ton of different functions. I use wasm as a scripting language for running isolated untrusted scripts in a game I'm developing, and it works really well https://github.com/JMS55/botnet.

I'm working on a Screeps-like game using WebAssembly. You compile a script to WebAssembly, and for each robot you control on the server, it runs the script in an isolated environment to choose an action for that robot. The goal is to write a program to coordinate your robots to gather resources and expand your control of the server.

Here's an example bot script: https://github.com/JMS55/botnet/blob/master/example_bot/src/...

The basic infrastructure of the project is more or less in place, besides a visual replay viewer which I'm working on right now. What's needed is a bunch of work in designing game mechanics and APIs. I don't actually have any plans beyond bots running around and harvesting randomly generated resources at the moment. Feel free to open a discussion on the github page if you're interested in Rust, WebAssembly, and video games.

https://github.com/JMS55/botnet